The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Presents "Marc Quinn: All of Nature Flows Through Us"

Written by Rasmus Mortensen Friday, 18 May 2012 00:22

Aalborg, Denmark.- The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art is pleased to present "Marc Quinn: All of Nature Flows Through Us" on view at the museum from January 21st through April 29th. Marc Quinn belongs to the generation of Young British Artists, who in 1990 broke through with a bang on the art scene. Since then, Marc Quinn has worked with sculpture and painting in a sometimes violent and direct idiom. "All of Nature Flows Through Us" is Marc Quinn's first exhibition in Denmark. The exhibition takes as its starting point a series of new works, created under the inspiration from a trip to India. A number of skeletons cast in bronze entitled Matter Into Light is located on large betonpodier with fire around it. Around these works creases Quinn's works from the past year out. Themes such as death, passion, beauty and sexuality unfold in seemingly classical sculptures and paintings, all with a special twist. The entire exhibition brings its different expressions a series of existential and religious themes up to date.

A harmonious exhibition that is both disturbing and existential, innovative and classic, menacing and upbeat. The exhibition, created in cooperation with Kistefos Museum in Norway, is the first comprehensive presentation of Marc Quinn in Denmark. The exhibition catalog includes texts by curator at ART, MA. Gitte Ørskou and the Norwegian art historian Nora Cicely daughter Nerdrum.

Marc Quinn’s wide-ranging oeuvre displays a preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual. Using an uncompromising array of materials, from ice and blood to glass, marble or lead, Quinn develops these paradoxes into experimental, conceptual works that are mostly figurative in form. Quinn’s sculpture, paintings and drawings often deal with the distanced relationship we have with our bodies, highlighting how the conflict between the ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ has a grip on the contemporary psyche. In 1999, Quinn began a series of marble sculptures of amputees as a way of re-reading the aspirations of Greek and Roman statuary and their depictions of an idealised whole. One such work depicted Alison Lapper, a woman who was born without arms, when she was heavily pregnant. Quinn subsequently enlarged this work to make it a major piece of public art for the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square. Other key themes in his work include genetic modification and hybridism. Garden (2000), for instance, is a walk-through installation of impossibly beautiful flowers that will never decay, or his ‘Eternal Spring’ sculptures, featuring flowers preserved in perfect bloom by being plunged into sub-zero silicone. Quinn has also explored the potential artistic uses of DNA, making a portrait of a sitter by extracting strands of DNA and placing it in a test-tube. DNA Garden (2001), contains the DNA of over 75 plant species as well as 2 humans: a re-enactment of the Garden of Eden on a cellular level.


Quinn’s diverse and poetic work meditates on our attempts to understand or overcome the transience of human life through scientific knowledge and artistic expression. Marc Quinn has exhibited in many important group and solo exhibitions internationally including Sonsbeek ’93, Arnhem (1993), Give and Take, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2001), Statements 7, 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and Gwangju Biennale (2004). Solo exhibitions include Tate Gallery, London (1995), Kunstverein Hannover (1999), Fondazione Prada, Milan (2000), Tate Liverpool (2002), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2004), Groninger Museum, Groningen (2006) and MACRO, Rome (2006), DHC/ART Fondation pour l’art contemporain, Montréal (2007) and Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009).

The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg was designed by Elissa and Alvar Aalto and Jean-Jacques Baruël, and built between 1968 and 1972. It is a very flexible building, that, due to the mobile partition wall system, can change character, depending on the requirements of each individual exhibition. Special note should also be made of the unique use of natural light, which has helped to make the building world famous. The museum is designed to blend in with its natural surroundings, and like a ziggurat it rises to meet the adjoining hillside. It is situated on the edge of a large area of parks and woodland, and the surrounding vegetation stands in contrast to the precise contours of the building. The materials used were specially selected. The outer walls, and a large part of the floor area are made of carrara marble, and the light material structure helps to give prominence to the art works. The total area is approx. 6000sq.m. On the ground floor is the central hall together with an adjoining sculpture hall. Surrounding these are series of long sky lit galleries, seven smaller exhibition rooms, a chamber music room, the entrance hall, and the administration offices. On the lower ground floor are exhibition rooms, a café, cloakroom, lecture rooms, a study group room, a workshop and a library. The museum is encircled by a sculpture park, an amphitheatre and a grassy terrace. A brick wall forms a bridge between the stringent lines of the museum buildings and the wooded slopes behind. On display in the park are sculptures by Gunnar Aagaard Andersen, Willy Ørskov, Lene Adler Petersen, Mogens Møller and, in pride of place, Bjørn Nørgaard’s Klassisk tableau. Drømmeslottet (Classical Tableau. The Dream Castle) – a veritable crystal palace, complete with fluttering banners. The permanent exhibit traces the course of art in Denmark from Naturalism to Abstract Art and more recent experimental art forms. The Danish artist J.F. Willumsen occupies a central place in the collection, which also boasts a fine selection of works by artists from the first half of the 20th century – among them Vilhelm Lundstrøm, Edvard Weie, Jens Søndergaard and Erik Hoppe. Artists from the middle of the last century such as Wilhelm Freddie, Ejler Bille, Egill Jacobsen, Asger Jorn, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Richard Mortensen and Robert Jacobsen are well represented here, while late 20th century art is exemplified by such names as Willy Ørskov, Poul Gernes, Mogens Møller, Kirsten Christensen, Kirsten Ortwed, Kehnet Nielsen and Ingvar Cronhammar. Milestones in international art which have had an impact on Danish art are also highlighted, primarily through works from the mid-20th century by such artists as Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Karel Appel, Constant, Victor Vasarely and Serge Poliakoff. A large private collection forms the nucleus of the museum’s permanent exhibit. The Anna and Kresten Krestensen Collection was acquired in 1967 with the aid of a grant from the Kirsten and Palle Dige Foundation. It contains works from Denmark and abroad dating from the first half of the 20th century, and focusses primarily on Danish modernism, the COBRA group and the School of Paris. By dint of donations and new purchases the collection has expanded to include works by the surrealists, members of the Fluxus group and Denmark’s ”wild young artists” from the 1980s. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kunsten.dk

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